


Nature and Nurture

by Yavemiel



Series: Milestones [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Backstory, Blink and you'll miss it mention of sexual assault, Brief mentions of other characters - Freeform, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 05:58:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9421538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yavemiel/pseuds/Yavemiel
Summary: A series of vignettes that flesh out Cassian and Jyn's histories by marking a series of milestones in their lives.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is essentially a series of headcanons that I've been nurturing about our intrepid heroes, which I've fleshed out a little. The story is canon compliant as far as the movie is concerned, but I've taken serious liberties with canon as I understand it pertaining to their histories before the movie. Enjoy!

_First Word_

Jyn’s first word is “No”. Neither of her parents are surprised. Galen says it’s because she’s born to be a rebel, just like her Mama.

Cassian has three older sisters, and he speaks early as a matter of self-defense: be heard or be forgotten. His first word is “Please” in reference to hot cakes his Mamita just took out of the oven, almost lost in a melee of chatter from his sisters, but his Mamita hears, and he gets the first cake. The first six years of his life are filled with laughter and shouting and talking. It’s only once his family are gone and he joins the war that he learns the value in being silent.

_First Step_

Galen likes to say that Jyn never walked: she skipped straight from crawling to running and her knees bear the scars to prove it. Lyra laughs and says she’s just like her Papa, always trying to get to the next place and the next and the next.

Cassian walks late, and when he starts, each step is cautious and measured, preferably with a piece of furniture nearby in case of emergency. He spends much of his later life running, but caution is a habit that sticks with him throughout his life as an insurgent and later an Intelligence Officer.

_First Toy_

Jyn’s first toy is a miniature plush Stormtrooper that she, with her boundless two year old imagination, names Stormy. It’s a gift from her Papa’s funny friend who always wears white, and she loves it with all her heart, though she doesn’t think that Mama likes it much: every time she sees it her face does a funny twisty thing, which makes Jyn’s tummy feel weird, but she adores Stormy, so he comes with her everywhere, even when Mama and Papa wake her up in the middle of the night and they sneak out of their house into a waiting freighter which carries them far far away from anything Jyn has ever known.

Cassian’s first toy is a soft bear that vaguely resembles the Ewoks that also have a home on Fest. It’s a hand-me-down from his sister Jera, but he doesn’t care, and for the first three years of his life, Benjii is his constant companion, his ragged ear never far from Cassian’s mouth. He has to share him with his little sister Lu when she comes along, which he begrudges at first, but she loves Benjii as much as he does, so he decides he’s ok with it. When he has to leave Fest, he risks being caught to creep back under cover of darkness and leave Benjii buried under a rock on the mound that is the only sign of the mass grave that contains his entire family. He doesn’t want them to be lonely.

_First Weapon_

Jyn is with Saw Gerrera three weeks when he hands her a small vibroblade along with a sheath designed to be concealed near her ankle. She holds it between her thumb and index finger and looks at him in confusion. “Come child,” he says, “It’s time for you to learn our business.” Later, Jyn becomes proficient with her truncheons, and a crackshot with a blaster, but she never feels safe unless she has that vibroblade strapped to her ankle.

Cassian joins the Separatists on Fest age six years, three months and two days. He gets his first blaster aged six years, three months and twelve days, along with a crash course in using it from a man who seems ancient to his young eyes. He takes to immediately, the memory of his family’s deaths goading him into hours of practice long after his aching body begs him to give up. By the time he’s ten, he can use any blaster that chances its way into Separatist hands, and when he joins the Rebellion not long after, they’re stunned to find a young boy who can outshoot most of their experienced fighters. His marksmanship quickly brings him to the attention of Captain Draven, an officer in the Rebel Intelligence Division, who has fewer qualms than some others about training a child of his age. Cassian takes the tutelage gratefully. He doesn’t understand the other officers’ reluctance; he hasn’t been a child for years.

_First Kiss_

The first kiss that Jyn counts is when she’s sixteen. The boy is two years older than her, surprisingly funny and sweet for someone who joined Saw’s rebels after watching the Imperials slaughter his family. They’re both a little tipsy after a successful run, the first time Jyn can remember laughing in months (years?) when suddenly his mouth is pressed against hers, chaste, but something jumps in her chest nonetheless and time seems to slow for a moment before they both start giggling and it speeds back up. He dies two weeks later in a botched attempt to assassinate a minor Imperial officer. Jyn can’t remember his name, but she still remembers his smile. (The first kiss she choses to forget is at fourteen, when a new recruit decides that a young girl on the cusp of adulthood would be easy pickings for a man thirty years her senior and 150 pounds heavier. He takes her by surprise, forcing his tongue into her mouth for long seconds before she knees him squarely in the balls and follows it up with a punch that breaks his nose. Saw lets her kill him herself. His name was Kern.)

Cassian’s first kiss is also at sixteen (although as far as the Rebellion is concerned, he’s eighteen already, a fully-fledged operative). It’s a dead drop gone wrong in the most ridiculous fashion, he and his partner almost caught in the wrong place at the wrong time by a Stormtrooper taking a piss. Elayna sees him first, swearing under her breath in Huttese as her eyes dart to the crevice they’ve been using to communicate with their contact. Cassian tenses and goes for his blaster but Elayna is faster, slamming him up against the wall and plastering her mouth against his. He freezes but doesn’t shove her off and the errant trooper barely gives them a glance as he zips up and slopes off around the corner. Elayna pulls back, wiping her mouth as Cassian stares, and gives him a wry grin before darting for the shadows. He’s almost too shocked to follow her, but instincts carry his feet where common sense has frozen. She’s almost twenty years older than him, and married to a cheery mechanic from Yavin IV. In the two years they remain partners, they never mention it again.

_First Kill_

The first deaths Jyn is responsible for come when she is ten years old. Even Imperials are less likely to look at a child and think ‘insurgent’, a weakness Saw is only too willing to take advantage of, and so it is that none of the troopers overseeing a convoy of armaments into Jedha City glance twice at the beggar girl sitting at the side of the road, nor do they notice as she slides a live grenade into the treads of the largest truck and slips into the shadows. Jyn is still close enough when the grenade goes off that her ears ring for days afterwards, but she’s grateful, because she can pretend that it’s the explosion rather than the screams in her memory which make her sullen and withdrawn. (The first kill she makes with her own hands is two years later, a close quarters fight with a bounty hunter who thinks that Saw’s youngest rebel would make an easy target for a reward from the Empire. He doesn’t expect the vibroblade that slides between his ribs as easy as breathing. There’s less blood than Jyn expects, the blade cauterizing the wound as it goes, but she still thinks she catches glimpses of it on her hands for weeks afterwards).

Like Saw, the Separatists recognize the value of a child’s face and an assassin’s hands, and aged nine, Cassian has more covert kills to his name than many who have been with the insurgents for years. He loses track of how many people die at the end of his blaster, but he never forgets the first: a young man on the other side of the vicious civil war being waged on Fest, Cassian never finds out why he deserves to die, only that the high command has decreed it. He doesn’t hesitate before he pulls the trigger, but he is nearly caught afterwards, frozen in horror as the man screams in agony before going limp and quiet. Even after decades at war, it’s still those screams that haunt his worst nightmares.

_First Betrayal_

Jyn has been betrayed by many people in her short life: by her father, who left with the man in white, by Saw Gerrera who left her in a bunker clutching a blaster waiting for days before she dared venture out, by contacts and thieves and bounty hunters who have swindled her on deals before she could swindle them, but the first, the very first and the one that still stings the most is her mother’s betrayal. Lyra knew that going back to Galen likely meant her death, and while she didn’t know the life that Jyn would learn with Saw, she chose death with her husband over life with her daughter and Jyn still hates her for that.

On Fest, children attend school from four years of age. Cassian is a shy boy, who makes friends slowly if at all, hesitant to speak in front of his peers. It’s little wonder then that in his second year at school, he takes a shine to his teacher, a young man with a kind smile who lets little Cassian chatter to his heart’s content during breaks. Cassian tells Maestra Jondu all about Benjii and his sisters and his parents, and doesn’t think twice before answering questions about what his Mamita and Papi say about the Republic at home. When Cassian wakes to his little sister’s screams and a man in a mask hesitating with a blaster pointed at his head, he thinks it a nightmare until he hears the blaster bolt. It sears the wall by his head and he sits frozen staring at it as he hears Maestra Jondu telling the others that the boy is dead. To this day Cassian isn’t certain that it was a kindness to leave him alive. It was certainly foolish: when he has Jondu in his sights, he doesn’t hesitate, and he doesn’t miss.

_First Love_

Neither Jyn nor Cassian has ever been in love. There isn’t much space for it in the world of a thief or spy, where trust is the most precious of commodities. His closest friend is an Imperial droid he reprogrammed himself: she has no friends at all. She doesn’t understand why he comes for her on Jedha, on Eadu (neither does he, he only knows that his stomach twists in a way it hasn’t in years when he considers her under the dust of the Death Star, or crumpled in the flames of the landing platform). But he says "Welcome home" and she says "Someone is listening" and somehow, in the elevator ride that takes both seconds and years, they both feel it, emotion drawing them closer, like a gossamer web binding them together and by the time they collapse into each other on the beach and watch their death grow closer, beautiful but terrifying, they both know: they’ve never been in love, but they could be. This is as close as they get, and somehow, it’s enough.

_Fin_

**Author's Note:**

> While I loved the ending of Rogue One, and thought it was perfect, I am also an absolute sucker for a happy ending, so I'm planning a small follow up to this detailing some more milestones that Cassian and Jyn might hit together. I will post it as a separate story in the series however, so that anyone who likes to keep to the canon ending can just leave it here!
> 
> Hope you enjoyed the story, kudos and comments are always welcome and hugely appreciated! :)
> 
> Edited to Add: I'm feeling my way around tumblr at the moment, at yavemiel.tumblr.com and am constantly looking for new buddies to chat Rogue One with if that's your platform! :)


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